PEORIA HEIGHTS — The Forest Park Nature Center museum is about to receive a $275,000 makeover.

“We’re thrilled that we are going to provide our users and visitors a program that is updated, fresh and wholly interactive,” said J.D. Russell, the chief naturalist with the Peoria Park District and manager of the nature center. “It’s an exciting time here.”

Forest Park was one of 47 museums statewide to divvy up $20 million in total grant money funded by the “Illinois Jobs Now!” construction program. The projects are part of the Illinois Public Museum Capital Grants Program, administered by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.

The Peoria Park District will receive $250,000 from the state for the Forest Park project and add $25,000 of its own for a total cost of $275,000.

The current exhibits inside the museum portion of the nature center building will be removed and replaced with new modern and professionally designed and manufactured exhibits with interactive features such as touch-screen computers, Russell said.

“All of our museum displays, well, most of our displays will be updated and upgraded in one way or another,” Russell said.

Current displays such as “The History of Forest Park” and “People of the Past” will give way to exhibits that highlight the area watershed and the fragile and endangered hill prairie ecosystem. The birdwatching room, small animal enclosures and children’s hands-on area will all get upgrades. The “100-mile Hiker” program moves from a file card in a file box system to a touch-screen computer.

Russell said the exhibits would be planned in 2014, designed and built in early 2015 and hopefully opened to the public in the fall of 2015.

The Forest Park grant was the only one given to a museum in the Tri-County Area.

“Museums, like other natural and cultural facilities, improve local economies throughout the sate,” Marc Miller, the director of the Department of Natural Resourses, said in a prepared statement. “These places can become the backbone of a strong social structure within our communities.”